Nine-year-old Simon Sengabato, using a ruler to point at letters on a blackboard, helps his classmates learn the alphabet at a school for the Republic of the Congo’s minority Pygmy people.
“Read A, read B, read I, read U,” the boy instructs.
“Is that OK my friends?” he asks.
“Yes, it’s OK,” they reply in chorus.
The special school allows these children to study at least for a few years in an environment free from the discrimination and prejudice often suffered by central Africa’s various Pygmy groups at the hands of majority Bantu peoples.
“These are preparatory schools where the child learns for three years before being integrated into the official or ordinary education system,” said Father Lucien Favre, whose association brought the system to the Republic of the Congo.
They are based on a method known as ORA — observe, reflect, act — that was developed specially for Pygmy learners.
The concept was developed in Cameroon, the Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which are also home to Pygmies — a collective term for various indigenous tribes that is widely used although considered by some to be pejorative.
There are about 3 million Pygmy people from various ethnic groups in central Africa, popularly recognized for their diminutive stature, and they make up about 2 percent of the population of the Republic of the Congo.
This school in Impfondo, about 800km northeast of the capital, Brazzaville, chooses instructors from the same group as the children, “so there is a relationship of confidence between the teachers, the pupils and their parents,” Favre said.
Subjects include reading, writing and math, as well as hygiene.
The concept appears to be a success with the number of schools growing every year, although Mongombo said there was high absenteeism “during the season for fishing, harvesting or collecting honey.”
They are a group who “live an extremely marginalized existence,” the UN special rapporteur on the rights of indigenous people, James Anaya, said after a visit to the Republic of the Congo in November last year.
Many live on the outskirts of villages, without adequate housing or access to health and education, he said.
About 65 percent of the Republic of the Congo’s Pygmy children aged between 12 and 15 have not been to school, compared with 39 percent for the general population, according to the UN children’s organization, UNICEF.
A call for more equality, -integration and an end to “servitude” was issued at the second International Forum for Indigenous People of Central Africa held in Impfondo in the middle of last month.
The meeting drew 500 Pygmies, officials and agency representatives from Burundi, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, the Republic of the Congo, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Gabon and Rwanda.
They released a statement after the meeting calling for “immediate concrete measures for the definitive eradication of discrimination against the assimilation of the indigenous populations” and more room for them in public institutions.
Another project in Impfondo, close to the border with the Democratic Republic of the Congo, has taken the approach of including Pygmy girls in classes with others from the Bantu groups.
“Baakas [a Pygmy people], Bantus, we are all young girls. I do not see why I should hate anyone else,” said 16-year-old Bantu girl Daphie Kaya.
Nadege Ilangi is among 38 Pygmy girls among about 120 in the school run by Catholic sisters where they learn knitting and sewing as well as academic and life skills.
“I am convinced that at the end of this I am going to become someone. I will have my own studio, why not students under my charge?” the 19-year-old said.
“The more we educate the indigenous girls, the more we can limit their vulnerability,” said regional social affairs director Joseph Ngoma Nababou, who supports the center along with UNICEF.
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